Turkey was ushered into 2013 with great expectations that major steps would be taken to resolve the Kurdish question, considered to be the gravest problem in the country’s 90-year republican history. A suppressed sense of cautious optimism prevails among the people: the developments appear to be too good to be true and nourish anxiety about the devastating consequences if the hopes give way to disappointment.

Unprecedented things have happened. For instance, the head of the War Veterans and Martyrs Association in Adana urged the authorities “to do whatever it takes to stop the bloodshed.” This was significant because previously any initiative or meeting aimed at reconciling with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was conducted secretly, or no action was taken at all, out of fears of angering associations for the families of "martyrs" — or security forces killed by the PKK.

Those associations, made up predominantly of relatives of soldiers and police who have lost their lives since the PKK took up arms in 1984, have often functioned as front organizations for nationalist groups opposed to a peaceful political settlement to the Kurdish problem. The conflict, which has raged for almost three decades now, has claimed more than 40,000 lives, despite several lulls during unilateral PKK truces, the longest of which lasted from 1999 to 2004. Although PKK members and other Kurds account for more than three quarters of the death toll, the number of “martyrs” was high enough to prompt the establishment of numerous associations and the creation of an “anti-settlement lobby.”

The fact that even a few of those associations have lent support to the current negotiation process — centered around PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, behind bars on Imrali Island, and led by the country’s intelligence chief on the instructions of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — is of critical importance both for the public to believe in the legitimacy of the government’s approach and for political results to be obtained.